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Showing posts from June, 2011

iPADS & Convergence Culture

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iPADS are now an important learning tool within the 21st Century school environment. Schools need to view creative media as one of the key "learning corner stones" of the contemporary classroom. Classrooms should enable students to express their cultural situation, their stories and knowledge expressions whilst employing creative technologies such as iPADs. This need is well stated  by  Henry Jenkins re: "Convergence Culture". If you don't know Henry Jenkins play this video; A relatively new animation media app for the iPADS enables students to self express in an immediate and rewarding manner. The app looks fun and engaging. The app is called Blush Undivided Video. Check out the app via YouTube There is a change in who develops the content. It is important that students are engaged in creativity via "content creation". Rich media content development should not be the sole domain of the teacher. iPAD apps and the convergent culture are hel

Constructivist Learning and Moodle

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According to Dougiamas (1998) as shown by the diagram above, the learning theory we call constructivism is a collection of several learning theories that continue to be developed.  Some of these theories (Critical (Kincheloe, 2008) and Cultural (Hutchison, 2006))  are more connected to the idea of constructivism as a philosophical/epistemological concept.  Moodle is built on the constructivist theory of learning and in general, this aspect of Moodle is ignored. It is easy to overlook the theory and focus on Moodle as an object or a tool. Designing “how to” Moodle courses are easy to manufacture, easy to measure, and easy to assess but they are deficient in the development of a constructivist learning environment. It is important that online courses are not “content dumps” with little application to learning processes other than reading and remember. The following slide “Future of eLearning Moodle Moot 2011” offers some insights to enabling a constructivist learning environment Ign